mindfulness

 The liberal democratic story, with free will and the individual in focus may not work any more. As Yuval Harari points our will is guided by our desires and we cannot choose our desires. In the future AI will now us more than we know ourselves. We already get information and advertises on the net that are there because of our interests or  what we googled on before or what we had bought.  AI can be a far more dangerous technology in the future were we can be hacked by companies or dictators. A new big story may be produced slowly and from many sources.  It may hopefully not be superstitious but grounded in science.  It may be aware of that we are dependent on mother earth, nature and other people.  Or a more dark story will be that technology will save us, for instance by travelling to other planets or by never living forever with the help of computers.  Anyway we cannot look back. Harari meditates every day and goes every year for long vipassana retreats.   He is for sure influenced

 For instance life and knowledge.  Some bacteria has lived  on earth for more than 3 billion years. They divide and lives on and on and on.  Well more complex life forms have been her for a long time too - even if humans have not...  Knowledge is in fact very resilient - as long as there are books or internet or storytelling  An example from Shakespeare's Sonnet 18:                                                  So long as man can breathe, or eyes can see                                                      So long lives this, and gives life too thee This information from Shakespeare has been around for hundreds of years and will probably, because of its beauty survive for a very long time (if we in the far future civilization may survive on other planets, eve if our sun has died).  So if humans are changing and fading away, knowledge are not. When you reed a good book complex information goes from one person to another even if the author is dead. Chiara Marletto has written a bo

  There Comes If you do not fight it---if you look, just look, steadily, upon it, there comes a moment when you cannot do it, if it is evil; if good, a moment when you cannot not. This are words by Simone Weil, from a Christian viewpoint, but it could have be written from a practitioner of meditation (she was interested i Mahayana Buddhism too. Grace fills empty spaces, but it can only enter where there is a void to receive it We must continually suspend the work of the imagination in filling the void within ourselves." "In no matter what circumstances, if the imagination is stopped from pouring itself out, we have a void (the poor in spirit). In no matter what circumstances... imagination can fill the void. This is why the average human beings can become prisoners, slaves, prostitutes, and pass thru no matter what suffering without being purified. The test of what is real is that it is hard and rough. Joys are found in it, not pleasure. What is pleasant belongs to dreams. We